Like President Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) frequently referred to Sen.-elect James Talarico (D-TX) as James “Tala-freako.” Yet if you expect the Texas Republican to continue with his hostile attitude toward the Texas Democrat, you’re almost certainly wrong. According to one expect political analyst, history points to Cruz trying to get along with Talarico — albeit for selfish rather than noble reasons.
“When is Ted Cruz going to change parties?” Lawrence O’Donnell asked MS NOW anchor Rachel Maddow on Wednesday. Cruz, who both noted earlier has said he wants to run for president in 2028, is now the sole Republican elected to a statewide office in the State of Texas, a state of affairs the state has not faced since the 1960s. Additionally, the Democrats’ victory in the Senate and House elections is the biggest shellacking an incumbent party has experienced since the 1994 midterm elections under President Bill Clinton.
“Because in the comparable event on the other side of our politics in 1994, when the Republicans won the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years,” O’Donnell told Maddow. “I was working in the Senate at the time, and I had to move to a smaller office because we were suddenly in the minority and all of that. It was totally shocking. It was the shock level of last night.”
He continued, “Two Democratic senators immediately switched parties, because they just looked at this and said, “We will never be in the majority again. We’ll never be chairman again. We are abandoning this Democratic Party.” That’s the kind of wipeout you have here. And Ted Cruz is uniquely positioned in the wipeout.”
Describing how Cruz’s position has changed, O’Donnell concluded that “Ted Cruz isn’t Ted Cruz anymore. He’s not going to be the guy who insults James Talarico when he walks onto the Senate floor. He’s going to be the guy who has his arm around him. You’re going to see this movement. We used to have a lot of states that would have one Democratic senator and one Republican senator.”
Ironically, Cruz predicted that Trump might destroy the Republican Party’s chances because of his White House policies and behavior. A leaked recording from April 2025 heard Cruz complain about Trump’s tariffs by saying, he told the president, “Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people’s 401(k)s are down 30 percent and prices are up 10–20 percent at the supermarket, we’re going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath.”
According to him, he then added that he told Trump, “You’re going to lose the House, you’re going to lose the Senate, you’re going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week.”
Cruz claimed that Trump replied, “F— you, Ted.”
